ED FISHER: Men without a country

Let me state at the start that this is not about whether the government should be monitoring our phone calls or not. It is about those who make classified information public.

Bradley Edward Manning is a U.S. Army private first class who was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 on suspicion of having passed classified information to the website WikiLeaks. He was charged with 22 offenses, including communicating national defense information to an unauthorized source and aiding the enemy. The information included videos of airstrikes in Afghanistan, 250,000 diplomatic cables, and 500,000 army reports. WikiLeaks published much of this between April and November 2010. His trial began on June 3.(The New York Times, June 15, 2013.)

Edward Joseph Snowden, a high school dropout hired by Booz Allen Hamilton, is a former technical contractor for the National Security Agency. Snowden disclosed details of classified NSA mass surveillance programs, including PRISM, the top-secret telephone surveillance project, to The Guardian and The Washington Post. The papers reported this information in early June.(The New York Times, June 10, 2013.)

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During my career in the U.S. Air Force, I handled classified data routinely. During a midnight shift at a radar station in Labrador we spotted something unusual. I called headquarters in St. Johns Newfoundland. “Sir, we’ve got a stranger coming from the south toward us. It is climbing rapidly and is now passing 60 angels (60 thousand feet).”

“Lieutenant, you do not see that blip on the radar. It does not exist and there will be no report on it. Do you understand?” was the response.

“Yes, sir…” Everything we did at the radar site was classified, yet here was an event so secret we could not even note it in our logs.

Years later, I realized we had seen an early U2 spy plane heading toward the Soviet Union.

About 4.9 million Americans, military and civilian, have some level of access to U.S. classified government information; about 1.4 million have a top-secret clearance. (The Week, June 21, 2013, page 18.)

All have taken on oath not to reveal such information. To violate this oath is a criminal offense. The gathering, accumulation, storage, access and use of such data is essential to national safety. Those who have a need to know must obtain clearances above top secret: such data is fragmented and specific to a particular topic. There are few places in the country where access to the most sensitive information is possible. Altogether, there are many billions of files of classified data.

Every file contains something of interest to those who are America’s enemies. With sufficient access to even confidential data, threads of inference can be detrimental to the nation’s interests. The government takes prodigious measures to protect classified information.

Neither Manning nor Snowden was in a position to evaluate the damage that could be done by the gigantic assortment of files they made public. They put many lives in danger without the slightest concern.

The names and locations of agents specialized in gathering material in hostile places could easily result in death or imprisonment. Contingency plans would be of extreme importance to our enemies. Plans for weapon systems, installations, and tactics would be of great value to them and would blunt our response if attacked.

Many elements in those files – taken out of context – could be easily misunderstood. China has certainly benefited from their labor of love (of self but not country). They put themselves in a seat of judgment for which they did not qualify.

Each is now a man without a country. The word to describe them is traitor. There was nothing “heroic” in their actions. Yet they came forth with the products of their discontent and malfeasance.

Others among us are just as set against our culture and society and therefore are unannounced traitors. Secret societies mistrusting government are led by shrewd twisters of truth. Splinter political groups use slander and lies to increase their power. Those who would refuse medical care to the poor hold back the progress of the weak to better themselves.

This nation is trying to become a better place for all its citizens. Those among us who would return us to a “simpler” time when people “knew their place” and women and minorities didn’t cause “trouble” feel of themselves as Manning and Snowden do … “we know better what is right.”